


shattered apart (damn hopeful heart)

by estel_willow



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Manpain, Michael is an unreliable narrator, dumb boys using their words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 00:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19346116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow/pseuds/estel_willow
Summary: “You have to let me get over you.”The words come out of nowhere, a strike from left-field that has Michael’s brain blinking rapidly to try and catch up with what had happened to result in Alex fucking Manes standing in front of him and telling him thathehas to let Alex get over him? The irony was pretty strong. Michael wasn’t the one with the gravitational pull of a black hole. Michael wasn’t the one that made the planet fucking spin just by smiling. Michael wasn’t the one who’s trapped him in a decaying, geosynchronous orbit thirteen years ago andnever let him go.





	shattered apart (damn hopeful heart)

“You have to let me get over you.” 

The words come out of nowhere, a strike from left-field that has Michael’s brain blinking rapidly to try and catch up with what had happened to result in Alex fucking Manes standing in front of him and telling him that _he_ has to let Alex get over him? The irony was pretty strong. Michael wasn’t the one with the gravitational pull of a black hole. Michael wasn’t the one that made the planet fucking spin just by smiling. Michael wasn’t the one who’s trapped him in a decaying, geosynchronous orbit thirteen years ago and _never let him go_. He isn’t the one that can’t breathe whenever he's alone. 

Michael’s a genius, and he thinks about Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion, how he’s been stuck in a flat orbit since he was sixteen and his eyes fell on Alex Manes and his _fuck you_ attitude to the world. He thinks about how he’s been trying to recreate the trace elements of the P2P-adjacent substance that clung to the edges of his console. He thinks about how he’s been able to run intellectual rings around almost everyone he’s ever met in his life even when he’s searching for the secrets of the universe at the bottom of every bottle he can get his hands on and lips around. And he thinks that all of that crashes down to nothing because his response to Alex is a slightly hysterical, “ _What?_ ”

He watches Alex as he catalogues the best way to respond. Michael’s always loved the slight crease between Alex’s brows as he works through the options available to him. He’s always loved the way that he wets his lower lip and his mouth falls half-open in preparation to speak before he changes his mind and visibly recalibrates. Michael wishes - fiercely - that he was easier for Alex to talk to. That when they looked at each other there was something past the deep heat that pulsed through him which made it impossible to think about doing anything other than crushing his body against Alex, giving himself over to everything Alex wanted because Alex’s hands on him are still the only thing that makes him feel alive. 

And if he’s been chasing a glimpse of Alex at the Crashdown on Tuesday nights, if he’s been at the Pony at the weekend - soda water and lime in a tall glass barely sating the thirst that rips at him - when Alex is there with Liz and Kyle, playing pool and looking _happy_ until his eyes fall on Michael and the world stutters to an embarrassingly rapid halt, if he’s been seeing Alex fucking everywhere around town because the universe has the worst sense of humour and won’t _let him forget_ then that’s just a fucking coincidence. If he’s been chasing a glimpse of Alex because a glimpse is better than the vacuum of nothingness that he feels like he’s been left with then he should be forgiven for it. He gave up all of his other addictions. This is the one he can’t quit. He’s done his best to snatch those moments to file away and pack up, giving himself these few moments before he slinks back into the shadows of obscurity, forgotten by everyone as they swim in their own happiness.

“I’ve been trying, Guerin.” The jacket that’s sitting on Alex’s shoulders is snug, pressed against him like a second skin and Michael finds himself jealous of the minuscule space between the leather and the fabric of Alex’s faded band t-shirt. Hell, he’s jealous of the space between the t-shirt and Alex’s skin. He remembers how it feels beneath his lips, the way Alex would keen upwards, back arched gracefully into the press of lips against the skin just above his collarbone and how his fingers would curl in Michael’s hair to push his head lower. Michael drags his brain out of the gutter with difficulty; he’s spent the better part of two-and-a-half years drowning himself in women and booze and acetone. It’s only recently he’s tried to clean his act up and if he’s being honest with himself (and when is he fucking ever honest with himself?) there’s precious little coincidence in the timing. He heard that Alex and Brent had broken up and realised that if he was ever going to truly be good enough he had to work on himself.

And that’s what he’s been doing. He’s been working on himself with the kind of fervour reserved only for rebuilding the console. The kind of single-minded focus that he’s applied to trying to get the fuck off this stupid lump of earth, away from the molten iron core and out of its elliptical orbit around a slowly dying star. The same kind of absolute concentration that had successfully reduced Alex to a sobbing mess, sated and spent and satisfied, sleepy grins and slow, sloppy kisses that Michael still found himself thinking about.

He can’t help the way he feels like the world’s crashing around him, the paper-thin ice he’s been spreading himself across for the last six months as he’s dried himself out and worked his soul raw is cracking further, spiderwebs of pre-emptive grief causing him to feel the familiar panic of not being good enough roar through his ears. He can feel himself sinking back into the icy helplessness of being alone even though Alex is still speaking.

“I’ve been trying to just- to forget and I can’t. And I need to know that you’ll-”

“I’ll what?” Michael butts in, one hand flinging recklessly to the side. “That I’ll step aside and let you be happy with someone else?” He sees the tone in his voice reflected in the slight flinch on Alex’s face. His heart’s in his throat, ready to leap out of his mouth and into Alex’s hand. He doesn’t fucking need it anymore, it’s just been renting a place in his chest for the renovations in Alex’s to be complete. At least, that’s what he’s been telling himself. That when Alex was ready, when they were both ready, their hearts would find a home together and Michael would _belong_. He’d belong to someone. He’d belong _with_ someone and he wouldn’t be alone but that’s a fucking joke, isn’t it? He’s a fucking joke, because he’d maybe let himself hope that if Alex wasn’t with someone else, he’d want to be with Michael but here he is. Breaking Michael’s heart all over again. 

He might as well let his heart flop all over the floor. The boot print from the last time Alex walked away hasn’t healed yet. It might as well get another one. He doesn’t have any other reminders of how dangerous hope is anymore. He might as well have a scarred, bruised, _borrowed_ heart. It might as well serve as his constant reminder that it doesn’t matter how hard he tries, he’ll never be enough for anyone. He’ll never be needed the way he needs others. He’ll never be the first person that people think about. He’ll never be _that_ person to anyone. 

“Hate to break it to you Alex, but I’m not that guy. I- I ca- I _can’t_ watch you play happy fucking families with someone else. I tried, okay? I _tried_ to be happy for you and it-” Michael’s not proud of how his voice breaks, a hand forcing its way through his curls and tangling in them, tugging in desperation to try and pull his fucking shit together.

“And it what?” Alex challenges softly, chocolate eyes unfathomable. Michael likes to think he’s always been good at reading Alex, that he’s always known what’s going on underneath the surface but he’s second-guessed a lot of things lately. He’s found himself wondering if he imagines the slight way that Alex sways towards him, the way Alex’s eyes smooth over his face like he’s watching for the tiniest changes, how Alex’s gaze lingers on his lips. He’s found himself wondering if he’s just projecting what he needs and wants, trying to mirror how he feels about Alex onto Alex so he can pretend. It would make sense.

He doesn’t realise he hasn’t spoken until he hears a click of fingers and Alex’s head is tipped to the side slightly, his eyebrows raised in that way that makes his forehead crease and Michael wants to smooth his thumb over them and wipe them away. 

“Guerin?”

Michael swallows. “I’m not a good enough person to see you be happy with someone else.”

It’s honest. It feels like he’s wrenching a part of himself out and he hears the way Alex draws a breath in. But now he’s started, breached the dam, he can feel the words bubbling up inside of him. Alex has a way of dragging the truth out of him, kicking and screaming into the light. Alex makes him quiet but Alex also makes him bleed. He bleeds truth and feelings and fears. He bleeds everything he has for Alex and even though he’s so tired of being left to bleed out on the ground, stuck in the swamp of his own inadequacies, surrounded by his failings, he does it every time and cuts himself open because Alex is looking at him.

“I’m not- fuck, Alex, I’ve tried so hard to be happy for you. But I’m not. Okay? And it’s fucking rich that you’re standing here asking me to _let you_ get over me, like I have any control over that. Like, if I could have stopped you from trying I wouldn’t have already done that? I don’t fucking know what you want from me, Alex. You want me to leave Roswell? Believe me, I’ve been trying. I’ve been trying to just leave and-” 

“ _Michael._ ”

Alex is looking at him again and Michael shuts up immediately, mouth clamping closed, silencing the words that want to babble out of him. From his lips to Alex’s soul. Or, more accurately, from his lips to bounce off the wall around Alex that Michael’s tried and tried and _tried_ to get through, only to be rebuffed every time. 

Michael’s so tired. He’s so tired he can feel it in the way his body sags and his soul aches and he just wants to crawl into bed and drown himself in acetone until he can pretend it’s numbing the pain. But he’s promised he’ll do better, he’ll be better, and so he just shakes his head sadly and looks away from Alex.

“I’m not doing this with you,” he says and he moves with surprising grace out of the way when Alex reaches out to try and grab his arm. He only stumbles a little. He doesn’t want to see the surprised look on Alex’s face, so he doesn’t look. “I’m not doing this right now.”

“We need to at least talk.”

“No,” Michael says as he yanks open the door to his airstream. “We don’t.”

It takes fifteen minutes for Michael to hear the sound of a truck rumbling away and even then, he doesn’t move away from where he’s pressed his forehead against the door and squeezed his eyes shut, jaw pressed together so tightly his teeth are aching in a way that’s familiar and soothing because he’s got nothing fucking left.

***

Alex comes back three days later and Michael’s barely slept. He’s played the guitar until his fingertips bled, split raw by old cat-gut strings that stung and scratched at him. He’s stared at the stars from the top of his airstream and watched the MilkyWay move overhead lazily because she doesn’t give two shits about the colossal, cosmic cluster-fuck that his life is. She doesn’t care about a single speck of dust. Not when she’s got the galaxy to look over. The infinite vastness of the universe used to make him feel safe, he used to look up and know that there was something out there for him, a place. Now he looks up, and he feels small and insignificant and stupid for ever thinking there was a place for him.

He’s wrung out and strung out and hung, drawn and quartered and there’s nothing left of him to salvage. He’d yelled at the sky, kicked at the table in his bunker and upturned the console which had fallen apart as easily as it had come together. Pieces that belonged, that fused, broke again under the force of Michael’s inconsolable grief and he spent hours recreating the console, piece by piece, watching them fuse together again and pretending that if he tried hard enough he’d be just like them. That the jagged pieces of himself would smooth out and sit neatly together or, at least, that the rough edges would form a shape that made him compatible with the broken, ragged edges of Alex Manes. They could be whole together. At least, that’s what he’d hoped would happen. 

The reality is that Alex is at his fucking door again, banging on the sheet metal and not just _leaving_ because that’s what he’s fucking good at and Michael can’t have a repeat of their last meeting. Even though he didn’t say much, and neither did Alex (and that was their problem, wasn’t it? They never fucking talked because they were always too busy getting naked and he was a fan of the orgasms but not the leaving or lack of communication that always followed because, fuck, he hated watching Alex leave), it had been enough for him. Enough to make him feel raw like an exposed nerve. 

The reality is that Alex is at his fucking door and if Michael doesn’t open it within the next thirty seconds it might cave in because Alex is still knocking and the vibrations echo along the walls of the airstream and Michael wonders - not for the first time - how this thing has survived storms and his powers if it trembles at the touch of Alex’s hand (he can’t blame it, though, Michael’s sure that the universe would shake under the force of Alex Manes if he turned his attention onto it, he’s helpless to resist). 

The reality is that when he pulls open the door, to demand that Alex just leave him alone because if Alex is going to try and get over him then he’s sure as fuck going to do the same thing, he’s met with an Alex that looks like he hasn’t slept in three days either, an Alex that looks like the world’s too much, an Alex that looks like Atlas just after the sky was dropped on his shoulders and he was told _carry on_.

He opens his mouth to speak but Alex is stepping up, pushing him backwards. Alex is frowning, hands on Michael’s chest and his fingers flex against the oil-stained shirt. Michael can’t work out if Alex wants him to strip or speak. He thinks about quantum mechanics and the Fibonacci sequence, he thinks about the vast emptiness of a universe that’s got no love in it for anyone, least of all for an alien refugee that wasn’t worthy of the one thing he’d ever wanted for himself. He thinks about how he doesn’t want to feel the press of skin against his, even if this is the last time. He thinks about how he can’t handle having Alex pushing into him, around him, into his very being because he knows that it might be the last time but he also can’t think of anything he wants more. 

There’s chaos, it’s loud and it hurts. He’s off balance anyway, he has been for a long time, and Alex _isn’t touching his skin_. Michael needs it. He knows it’ll hurt, that he’ll be torn open when Alex walks away again after this but he wants it. He wants Alex. He wants Alex more than anything, more than hope for a future free from isolation. He wonders how pathetic it makes him that he’ll take whatever scraps Alex is willing to throw to him. How he’ll crawl across broken glass for a chance to breathe the same air as Alex fucking Manes. God. He hates himself so much, sometimes, that he’s amazed anyone wants to be around him. He hates himself so much that it-

Everything goes blissfully silent and Michael doesn’t know how he missed the moment between Alex pushing him backwards becoming Alex pressing him against the counter, hands cupping his face and sliding into his hair and pulling him into a kiss. He doesn’t know how he missed it and he’ll be fucking mad at himself for it later because there’s something about the way Alex looks at him just before they kiss that makes him feel like he’s something precious and special and _worthy_ and he has all of those small moments categorised in his mind to replay when he wants to truly kick himself in the nuts when he’s feeling worthless anyway, a sense of self-flagellation that’s almost sweeter than getting punched in the face by a stranger.

It takes him less than a second - but it feels like a lifetime - to catch up with what’s happening, the warm slant of lips against his, the bite of teeth and press of tongue and the way that Alex kisses him the way he knows makes Michael’s knees weak. He presses in and Michael’s fingers lift to cup his jaw, surprise and hesitation kissed away by the tug of Alex’s fingers in his hair. His gentle touch, brush of calloused fingertips along the graceful sweep of Alex’s neck is rewarded with a soft moan as Alex opens up into the kiss and Michael takes the opportunity to cup the back of Alex’s head and push forwards, letting Alex’s lower back hit the counter opposite them. 

From there, it’s a dance they both know well. Michael breaks the kiss to breathe harshly against Alex’s mouth, grunting at the sharp tug to his hair as his fingers quest down to skate along the waistband of Alex’s jeans, sneaking under the fabric of his shirt and feeling the muscles in his abdomen tightening in response. He breathes _off_ and Alex complies, letting Michael push his jacket from his shoulders and tug his shirt off and throw it to the side, ducking his head to kiss and suck a line down Alex’s throat to the skin above his collarbone where he bites lightly and Alex’s fingers twist in his hair and Michael groans, fingers falling to fumble with Alex’s jeans, protesting only mildly (since his mouth was preoccupied re-learning the lines of Alex’s chest with his tongue) when one of Alex’s hands dropped away from his hair to catch his weight against the counter. He can feel Alex shifting his weight slightly, spreading his legs and bending his knees a little and Michael takes the gentle pressure on his head as a sign that he’s heading in the right direction. And when Alex breaths his name, it sounds like a benediction that’ll carry Michael through him leaving again.

***

Alex doesn’t leave. Michael realises this when he wakes up, sweaty and sticky (and fuck, he really needs to learn to clean himself up after a marathon sex session because it’s a lot less sexy when there’s the dried on, messy remains of his - their - orgasm peeling against his skin) but sated and definitely not alone. There’s a weight against his chest which is enough to offset Michael’s vague disgust at having just collapsed after they’d finished, and there’s warm breath puffing over his chest and an arm around his waist. Alex’s leg is draped over his, the stump settled between his thighs and his other one outstretched, almost twined with Michael’s but not quite, top of his toes brushing the edge of his foot. It’s that lazy early morning sleepiness where he knows Alex isn’t fully awake and he mumbles something against Michael’s collarbone when Michael tightens his arm around Alex’s shoulders to haul him closer. Alex, sleepy and pliable, just snuggles closer, mumbling something unintelligible and Michael can’t help the way that his lips curl up into a smile, something that feels like hope being fanned somewhere deep in the chasm of his chest.

Michael’s fingers slide along Alex’s bicep, tracing the scar that puckers the back of his upper arm. Alex hums against his skin, which Michael takes as consent to keep going, fingertips trailing over Alex’s shoulder blade and down his spine, playing it in gentle taps like a pianist. He still can’t quite believe that Alex is here, _right here_ , and he doesn’t want to move too much because he doesn’t want to break the moment. He doesn’t want to break the spell of contented perfection that’s fallen over him. If he talks, if he moves, Alex might be gone by the time he blinks himself back to reality. He curls himself around Alex and buries his nose in the crown of Alex’s hair feeling it tickling his face, a sensation that’s annoying as it is reassuring that this is real. As real as the weight against his chest, the butterfly kisses he can feel Alex pressing against his skin. 

“What happened to me having to let you get over me?” he asks, his voice a low rumble and he can feel the moment that the spell’s broken and he curses himself for it. Alex tenses in his arms, the hand that was lazily drawing circles against the skin of his hip freezes and splays flat, arm tensing as Alex pushes himself upright, shuttered guards up behind his eyes and Michael realises this is why he can never have anything good. He fucking just ruins it. Opens his mouth and all the wrong shit comes tumbling out and fucks up a perfectly good, perfectly _perfect_ moment.

“Guerin-”

“No- Alex, I-” Michael feels his heart in his throat, hammering and panicking because he can physically see Alex withdrawing from him. “I’m sorry. Shouldn’t’ve said anything.”

“You’re right,” Alex says and Michael feels that tiny fanned flame of flickering hope in his chest flutter, smothered out by the rough blanket of Alex’s common sense. It hits him like a truck to the chest and Michael drops his hands from where they’ve been stroking along the scarred line of Alex’s back to let him move away if he wants to.

He wants to. He does. Michael feels like he’s had a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. In fact, that would be more pleasant than the way he’s feeling right now. It’s a sharp reminder that he’s not good enough. That he has to make the most of the moments he gets with Alex because he’s not worth anything more. He’s never been wanted in his life, not properly and he knows a lot of that is his fault, his behaviour, the way he is, but that doesn’t make it hurt less when he’s reminded of it. 

“Fuck, I shouldn’t have come last night. I just-”

“You what?” Michael sits up, watches Alex retreating and awkwardly shimmying into his underwear. He reaches out for the sock that Michael had carefully put into the prosthetic after he’d wrung two orgasms out of Alex before getting him to the bed and undressing him like a priceless artefact. “Stop censoring yourself, Alex. Just tell me what’s going on.”

He watches Alex’s jaw twitch as he deftly starts redressing. He watches the way Alex’s hands hardly shake as he’s pulling his prosthetic on, as he reapplies his armour. He watches how Alex - so methodical and calm - doesn’t appear to feel the upended sense of disorientation that’s rippling through Michael. How it doesn’t seem to him that the world’s screeching to a halt again. 

“Alex.”

He’s on his feet by the time Michael’s had enough of the silence, jeans unfastened and sitting sinfully low on his hips. He doesn’t have a shirt on yet and fuck if that isn’t unfair. Michael’s never been able to say no to Alex and that’s half the problem. He’d give Alex whatever he wanted without hesitation if only he asked, and he knows he’d not get the same in return. Why would he? He’s nobody. He’s one half of a cosmic joke and Alex is going to leave him again.

He feels the chaos returning with a vengeance that felt more brutal than it had any right to. It tips the balance of his mind in the wrong direction and as he watches fingers that took him apart over and over doing up the button of Alex’s jeans, seeking out a shirt, he feels hysteria bubbling up inside of him, taking his breath away. He gets to his feet in a move that startles both of them, jeans flying into his outstretched fingers. The belt buckle clatters painfully against the inside of his wrist and he yanks them on in a way that feels as unforgiving as Alex’s intention of fucking leaving again. 

When Alex opens his mouth to speak, something inside Michael snaps. Hysteria bubbles over and he interrupts before Alex even gets a chance to say anything.

“Don’t.” Michael hadn’t developed psychic powers all of a sudden, though his life would be infinitely fucking easier if he did, but he knows Alex is about to give him some speech about needing to get over him. About how he needs fucking time. How he can’t do this. “If you’re gonna leave again just leave.” His hand waves towards the door of the airstream that feels more claustrophobic than anything else. “And if you leave- if you- fuck, if you leave this time, don’t come back.”

Alex says nothing, Michael’s dam has burst.

“You said I needed to let _you_ get over _me_? And then you turn up here and we- Alex we’ve just done what we always do. You’re the one that said that we didn’t talk enough and you turn up unannounced and we- we have sex and then you leave and I can’t take it.” His hand rakes through his hair, wishing that he wasn’t comparing his own touch to Alex’s. Cataloguing the differences. “I’m trying here, Alex but it’s hard when I don’t know what you want from me.”

Alex says nothing, Michael’s breath is ragged and uneven and he feels laid bare and exposed.

Michael lets out a laugh, at least, it’s meant to be a laugh. It sounds broken even to his ears and as Alex looks at him he knows Alex hears it too. He presses his lips together, takes a deep breath.

“You can’t keep doing this to me, Alex.” And it’s the truth. “I’ve tried to be a better guy, someone that you- that you can be seen with but fuck if you’re not making it difficult because you’re _still_ walking away. Even after you told me you were done. You walked away after I showed you-”

“That- you- _Michael_ -” 

Alex’s voice takes on that patient tone that Michael hates so much. That tone that always follows something logical that knocks Michael’s thrusters out and leaves him drifting, sucked back into the gravitational pull he thinks he needs to just get away from. He’s finally realised that he has to. He’s got no other choice because it isn’t _fair_. He’s a mess, he knows that, the beat-down, washed up, town drunk. He’s got no place trying to be in the orbit of someone like Alex that still shines after everything that’s been done to him, all the shit he’s been pushed through, it’s all just washed off and it’s left him shining, titanium in the face of everything. Teflon. And wanting hurts so badly, still. Wanting and needing so desperately is killing him. He’s tried so hard to be better and it’s hard to come to terms with the fact that he’ll never be _enough_. He never learns; he should have known that it was too little, too late, to try and make himself the kind of man who deserves Alex Manes. 

“Michael, look at me,” Alex says again and using his name twice within a matter of seconds is exactly what’s needed to drag Michael’s attention up and away from his spiralling self-deprecation. He looks up into Alex’s eyes and his stomach twists at the exasperated fondness sitting there. He watched Alex wet his lower lip, sees in his peripheral vision the way Alex’s fingers are flexing as he works himself up to speak, watches the furrow between his brows deepen and smooth, watches the way his jaw ticks and Alex’s eyes are moving, tracking Michael’s face in miniscule twitches. 

Michael steels himself for what’s coming next. He knows the face of rejection when he sees it. 

Alex’s voice is soft as he talks and Michael wonders how fucking spooked he looks. He drags his gaze up and meets Alex’s eyes again and he feels his breath leaving him in a rush. 

“I shouldn’t have left,” Alex says. And Michael can see the way that he breathes the words in, lets his body oxygenate them and push them through his mind before they flow out of his mouth. “When you- when you showed me your console, your ship- whatever it is. I- I shouldn’t have left.” He reaches out and Michael lifts his chin, ostensibly to pull away from the touch that’s reaching out for him except he doesn’t move fast enough. Alex’s fingers brush against his chin, skate along the edge of his jaw. The ghost of fingertips sends sparks along his skin, the familiar prickling of goosebumps breaking out over his face. He wants to push into it like a cat, rub himself against that touch until the world feels right again but he doesn’t.

In fact, Michael’s proud of how he steps backwards and Alex’s hand just hovers in the freshly vacated space between them before he sighs, heavy and defeated and it drops. 

It’s easy to tap into the part of him that hurts _so much_ and he lifts his eyes, meets Alex’s and says, “But you did. After you told me you were done with it, you still left. And then-” 

Alex wets his lower lip. “I know,” he reassures. Michael feels relieved that he doesn’t have to say the name of the prison. He managed to say it to Isobel and Max once. It doesn’t come up often but when it does, they call it ‘that place’ or ‘the prison’, so that they don’t have to name the place that destroyed so many of their people. 

The question’s been burned onto the back of Michael’s tongue since he watched Alex climb up and out of his bunker talking about the snow. He’s always swallowed it, in the precious few interactions he’d had with Alex where they’d talked, pushed it away and aside, ignored it because does the answer really matter to him?

The way the “Why did you, then?” spills from his lips tells Michael it had only been a matter of time before it was blurted out. At least, he thinks, he asked here where they were alone. Emboldened by hearing himself ask the question that’s driven him to distraction, he continues. “Why do you _always leave_ , Alex?” He doesn’t ask _how do I make you stay?_ because he can’t face hearing Alex answer with ‘you can't’. 

He watches Alex watch him. The silence stretches between them, fractious and fragile and ready to shatter at any moment. Alex’s breaths come in slowly and Michael can hear them shake. He can see Alex’s mind turning, the wheels in that remarkable brain of his spinning and whirring, warring with that intense sense of privacy and secrecy Michael knows he wears like a suit of armour. He’s always been on the outside of that process, given the smallest glimpses whenever Alex’s guards crack. He thinks the confession earlier was a chink in the armour. He waits. He knows Alex wants to talk, he can see it, to see truth spilling from his lips the same way they fall from Michael’s.

Michael wants to kiss him. Now he’s faced with the prospect of answers, he isn’t sure he wants them. Alex sees him move slightly, even though Michael thinks he’s standing still, and lifts a hand to stall him. The universal sign for stop. Michael does.

“I-” 

“Please,” Michael asks, though that’s really the last thing he wants. His mouth isn’t listening to his panicking brain anymore. “I need to know.”

“It’s never been you.” Alex looks up sharply from where he’s been inspecting the floor when Michael scoffs, the sound escaping him before he can catch it. That dark gaze catches Michael’s own and, like always, Michael feels himself sinking into it. It’s warm and rich and there’s nothing more he wants than to be lost in Alex forever in all the ways that count. “It _hasn’t_.” 

He watches Alex shake his head, rock forward like he wants to reach out for him again but thinks better of it and suddenly, Michael’s pride at his strength in moving away from Alex is replaced with a deep sense of self-annoyance. 

“Look, I- I’m not good at _this_ \- No- don’t say anything, Guerin. I know you’re not either.” Michael snorts, closing his mouth. Alex takes this as the signal to continue talking that it was. “But that- When you showed me the console I-” He wets his lower lip and Michael wonders if he realises that only makes him want to kiss the taste away. “It hit me that even though I- even though I’ve walked away from you so many times, I- I always came back but you were trying to-” His brows furrow, the words coming out stuttered and stilted and Michael can see that it’s irritating Alex. He wets his lower lip again. Michael’s fingers itch to reach out and tug him close, push a hand through his hair and brush his thumb underneath that spot on Alex’s ear that makes his eyes drift shut and his head tip away to give more skin for Michael’s touch to roam. 

Alex is piecing his thoughts together and Michael can see when he’s ready to talk again. He cracks his knuckles absently, fingers squeezing his thumbs into his palms until the joints pop. 

“I realised that you were trying to leave forever. That there wasn’t anything that’d make you want to stay if you had the chance to go _home_. I know you’ve never felt like you had a place here.” Michael’s chest wrenches painfully enough that he sucks in a breath and it catches Alex’s attention. Of course it does. “Michael?”

“You keep saying that name,” Michael manages, feeling his lips twitching up into a small smirk. “Pretty sure that’s not me. I’m _Guerin_ , in whatever tone is the tone of the moment.”

Alex rolls his eyes, but instead of looking annoyed, there’s a soft affection there that makes Michael feel a little gooey in the middle.

“Stop changing the subject,” he says. Michael holds up a hand in surrender and leans backwards until his hips rest against the counter. He drops his hands to curl around it, feeling the battered surface beneath his fingers and feeling reassured, grounded. “It freaked me out. I’m not- I’m not proud of that. The thought that you’d actually leave, for good, and never come back and-” 

He watches Alex swallow and waits.

“It struck me that I wasn’t ready to tell you what you needed to hear. And if you left- I- I’d never get the chance to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Michael presses. His heart’s in his throat. When Alex opens his mouth to speak again, though, Michael’s still-dripping dam seems to still have a few truths left to spill, wrenched from the depths of his chest. “Alex, I can’t-”

“I love you.”

Michael’s world narrows down, shrinking so rapidly he almost feels his ears popping. He can feel his breath catching but it all feels so alien, so _foreign_. He can hardly breathe, his head feels lighter than it should and the air’s been sucked out of his airstream. He waits for the ‘but’, he waits for Alex to continue, eyes wide and daring not to move in case the moment shatters like everything else fucking precious in his life.

“I love you.” Alex says it again, holding Michael’s eyes, unafraid of what might come next, seemingly unafraid of rejection. It isn’t swallowing him whole the way it is Michael.

Nothing follows, just a shy, awkward smile from Alex and he lifts his shoulders. The apology for it taking so long is written across his face and Michael...

Michael can finally breathe.

**Author's Note:**

> Man, this was a labour of ~~love~~ something. First time writing from Michael's POV and man, the boy needs a hug. 
> 
> Big thanks to Mandsangelfox, Saadiestuff, Shenanigans, Beamirang & the Roswell Moms for cheerleading to get me over the final hurdle! <3


End file.
